Progress in autism program rollout goes dark as Ontario government withholds new updates

The Ontario government is refusing to publicly divulge its progress in enrolling children in core autism therapies, after the last update showed it was far off its own target.

Merrilee Fullerton, the minister of children, community and social services, has said the government would get 8,000 kids into core clinical services by the end of the fall, but as of last month that number was only about 888.

Government officials said at that time that movement was initially slow due to getting a new intake process up and running, and they said those numbers would start to grow exponentially.

But Fullerton's office refused to provide an update to those numbers in response to a request this month from The Canadian Press.

"Given that thousands of invitations are out the door to families, and at different stages, providing these numbers no longer reflects the rollout of the Ontario Autism Program like it once did," spokesperson Patrick Bissett said in a statement.

Bissett did not respond to follow-up inquiries asking for more of an explanation and if that meant those numbers would ever be provided again.

NDP critic Monique Taylor called that "shameful."

"That's not transparent and that's not what families need or want," she said.

"They have such a failure of a program happening and they have such a failure of a rollout that now they're hiding."

Alina Cameron's seven-year-old daughter has been on the wait list for government-funded therapy since Oct. 30, 2017 and said for her, seeing the enrolment progress isn't just a matter of transparency, but a matter of financial planning.

Her family has managed to cobble together some treatment, paying out of pocket for part-time therapy, but nowhere near the annual $93,000 she has been clinically prescribed.

Cameron is paying nearly $900 a week for part-time services and doesn't know how much longer she has to plan to cover that, or if she needs to further scale back her daughter's treatment, or perhaps make a new plan with the bank, she said.

"[With enrolment updates] we would know generally what's happening with the program, we would be able to estimate our time on the wait list and prepare financially to fill that gap between now and when our children get the invitation," Cameron said.

"But beyond that, it gives us hope that it's coming."